Selected Poems

Selected Poems (1993) – Josef Hanzlík
Bloodaxe Books • ISBN: 9781852241247 • Condition: Good
Gently handled, faintly existential, from Crappy Old Books

So you want poetry. Not “live, laugh, love” poetry. Actual poetry.
The sort that comes with:

• memory

• regret

• history

• weather

• and the subtle suspicion that you’ve been living life at the wrong emotional resolution.

Enter Selected Poems by Josef Hanzlík, from Bloodaxe Books—the people who never knowingly publish anything simple or soothing. This is the poetic equivalent of sitting in an Eastern European café with someone who has seen far too much, orders coffee like it’s a moral decision, and occasionally drops a line that rearranges your insides.

Condition: Good (like your bookshelf, not your life)

When Crappy Old Books says Good, we mean:

• The cover is intact, attached, and not doing that tragic curling-at-the-edges thing

• The spine may show a light crease or two: evidence that another human being has already had at least one meaningful crisis over these poems

• All pages present and correctly bound—no missing stanza, no ripped-out last poem, no mysteries beyond the intentional ones

• Mild, respectable wear: gently softened corners, maybe a faint thumb-smudge or two—signs of actual reading, not decorative ownership

No underlining in lime highlighter, no inspirational Post-it notes stuck to the margins, no evidence that someone tried to “improve” the poems with their own rhymes. Just a properly kept Good copy, ready for another round of introspection.

What’s going on inside (poetically speaking)

Expect:

• Poems that trust you to keep up: no explanatory footnotes saying, “This is the bit where you feel sad”

• Images that hover somewhere between dream and memory: streets, rooms, fields, faces, all slightly tilted

• That distinctly Central/Eastern European flavour of humour where you’re not entirely sure whether to laugh, sigh, or just stare at the wall for a bit

• A language of quiet estrangements: from places, from other people, sometimes from yourself

This isn’t poetry that tries to seduce you with glitter and easy slogans. It’s more:

“Sit down. Here is a small, precise scene. Something is wrong, but we won’t name it. You’ll feel it anyway.”

You will not find:

• Motivational verse about seizing the day

• Rhymed declarations about sunsets and soulmates

• Poems that can be safely printed on a mug

You may find:

• One or two lines you can’t stop thinking about

• A sense of being gently but firmly nudged out of your usual headspace

• The quiet, unnerving sensation of being understood by someone you’ve never met

Why a Good, pre-loved copy is perfect for this sort of thing

New poetry books can feel intimidating, like they might judge you for not “getting” them immediately. From Crappy Old Books, this Good copy:

• Already has the reassuring aura of having been opened, puzzled over, maybe reread at 1am

• Lets you fold a corner, stick in a bus ticket as a bookmark, or leave it face-down on a table without feeling like you’ve committed a cultural crime

• Comes pre-aged just enough that it looks like what it is: a working volume for actual reading, not a showroom artefact

It’s a book meant to be carried around, flipped through, revisited. Not posed next to a luxury candle in an aspirational flat-lay.

Ideal for readers who:

• Have outgrown the idea that poetry must either rhyme or be incomprehensible, and are happy in the strange middle ground

• Enjoy that Bloodaxe speciality: poems with emotional depth, political shadows, and zero fuss

• Like the sensation of standing in someone else’s memory and recognising bits of your own

• Are fond of that delicate feeling of “I don’t fully understand this, but it understands me”

Also suitable for:

• Commuters who want something short but not shallow

• People who secretly believe thin books are more dangerous than thick ones

• Anyone who enjoys quiet literary melancholy as a lifestyle choice

Recommended reading situations

Best enjoyed:

• With a drink you keep forgetting to sip because you’re busy rereading a stanza

• In a slightly drafty room with a lamp that’s just a bit too dim, for ambience

• In the emotional state “functioning, but reflective”

Potential side effects:

• Sudden urge to write your own terrible-but-earnest lines in a notebook

• Nostalgia for places you’ve never actually visited

• That small ache behind the ribs that means something’s landed

Cold facts, warm implications

• Title: Selected Poems

• Author: Josef Hanzlík

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books (1993)

• ISBN: 9781852241247

• Condition: Good – lightly worn, fully intact, artistically moody

Selected Poems: for when you want language that does more than decorate—language that quietly rearranges the furniture in your head while pretending not to. Supplied in honestly Good condition by Crappy Old Books, proud traffickers in slim volumes of concentrated feeling.

Keep browsing: See more Poetry books Other books by Josef Hanzlik